


you want to disappear? I got the manual right here

by agnesgrey



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Death Fix, Community: intoabar, Crossover, F/F, Femslash if you squint, First Kiss, Fix-It of Sorts, Possibly Pre-Slash, Post-Canon, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Walk Into A Bar, post-Atomic Blonde
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-25 00:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20367514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agnesgrey/pseuds/agnesgrey
Summary: Natasha Romanoff goes into a bar and meets Delphine Lasalle fromAtomic Blonde."Someone told me....this life, this....profession...."(The bartender leered behind her back. Natasha ignored him.) "It can only end one way. Don't you agree?" she repeated."Of course."





	you want to disappear? I got the manual right here

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2019 Into a Bar challenge: "MCU Natasha Romanoff goes into a bar and meets... Delphine Lasalle (Atomic Blonde)." Set right after the end of _Captain America: The Winter Soldier,_ when Nat's blown all her covers and is trying to figure out a new one. 
> 
> Title and epigraph from Morphine's "Take Me With You": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOTZ4vzFrrk
> 
> I quoted and adapted some lines from the comics, _Atomic Blonde_ and _Endgame_ just for fun.
> 
> See endnotes for possible spoilers for _Atomic Blonde._

_You want to begin again_  
_ Pretend you're innocent_  
_ If you believe, you can convince yourself_  
_ I'm sure you can convince yourself_

\- Morphine, "Take Me With You"

Natasha didn't like the bar, but she had no choice: it was the only place her contact did business. It was studiedly sleazy, just like him: bad lighting, fake dark wood panelling, cheaply framed blown-up photos of topless women, their fake breasts and glossy dead eyes all the same, the white bartender doubling as a pimp if he saw a customer's eyes linger on a pair of tits. The drinks were watered down, the prices jacked up, the mirrors and glasses were never clean and right now, she was cursing herself for not having stopped at a food cart along the way. There was an emergency protein bar stashed in her purse, but the stale popcorn and blackening nuts in bowls scattered along the bar were more appealing. It was, like everything else about the business, a test, a hazing: this was what you had to put up with, if you wanted to sit in on the game already being played.

She knew it was meant as an insult, and turned it inside out to examine it. She changed her behaviour to match it: she checked her watch, asked the bartender the time as if she were afraid it was running slow, sighed, fidgeted, toyed with her drink without taking a sip. She stared straight into the mirror, guessing he was behind it watching her performance with satisfaction, and blew a strand of hair out of her face. She felt too bored to be convincing. This was where she'd started, watching herself perform to please other people, fitting into their expectations like a knife in a sheath. She kept looking into the mirror, seeing herself, not him, and had the sudden urge to throw her glass at the mirror and smash it. She kept still, then looked down and started going through her purse as it to find her phone (everything in it belonged to someone else -- the phone, the makeup, the worn and crumpled bills, the half pack of cigarettes and nicotine gum).

She didn't flinch when a gravelly man's voice said right behind her: "Sorry I'm late." She shook her head, shut the clasps of her purse too quickly as if trying to hide something, and turned on the barstool with a bright smile. "I don't mind waiting," she said as an obvious lie, letting frustration show in her eyes. It was all so smooth, so well-rehearsed, she could do it in her sleep; perhaps she was sleepwalking even now, dangerously underestimating this middle-aged white man with eyes hidden behind Ray-Bans, dressed in an expensive suit that didn't fit. The pants dragged low over his scuffed shoes and the sleeves rode high above his wrists. No, there was no way she could possibly underestimate this man. She reached out to shake his hand.

The contact grasped her fingers too hard and turned her hand over, then brought it up to his face, not bending down -- the movement strained her shoulder, and she remained expressionless -- and pressed an open-mouthed kiss into her palm, his slick tongue snaking over her skin, probing slowly, in no hurry. He finished with a final flick at her wrist, his saliva glinting even in the dim light. Natasha knew the bartender was grinning behind her back. She took her hand back and let it lie palm up in her lap, waiting for it to dry. (Inside her head, Yelena rolled her eyes so far back the whites flickered for a moment. _Slobbering like a dog! What does he expect you to do, scream?)_

"I have what you need," he said -- not as a supplication for her business, but as a reminder of who he thought was on top. "Not here, though. We'll have to go to my hotel to get it."

Natasha sighed, and it wasn't even an act. She knew she could stand up, let this man put his arm around her and let it brush her breast, feel his hand on her lower back steering her out of the bar, slipping lower, grabbing her ass in the elevator; it unreeled in her head like a bad film right up to the moment when she waited until he was getting his cock out while she knelt on the dirty carpet to spin and kick his legs out from under him, smash his knee with her foot, kick him in the gut, go through his pockets for what she needed and then vanish (perhaps with a parting gift of a kick to the head). She wanted something _new._

She shook her head. "I really don't think so," she said, in her real voice, which rang strangely in the bar. The bartender looked up from his pretense of not overhearing while he wiped glasses with a dirty rag, and the contact's face turned ugly.

"Look, it's _cute_ how you suddenly decided to try and grow a conscience after _everything_ you've done," he growled, putting the extra spin on _everything_ so she'd know he'd looked at every secret in her file. "But the truth is, you've been a very naughty girl. Not that you'd _know_ the truth if it bit you in the ass, you -- " He visibly held himself back, and Natasha began running the probabilities of taking out both him and the bartender so she could just leave: there was a drunk couple in a booth far back, the visible surveillance cameras were almost certainly for show, if she threw a chair through the mirror with enough force she could scare off who might still be behind it...."No more secrets," he hissed at her, looming closer. "What a fucking lie." She tensed her muscles, getting ready for the lunge that would pin him to the floor.

A woman's voice called out "Sorry, sorry, sorry I'm late!" and both their heads snapped left like a comedy routine. If it had been backup she'd have taken the chance to punch her foot into his gut and then bring her knee up into his nose, but she had no idea who had just casually upset the poker table. An olive-skinned woman with long, beautifully glossy black hair hurried over, overdressed for this place -- _very_ overdressed -- she wore a beautifully cut Chanel suit, carefully preserved but worn enough to be vintage, with the sheen of years. Not a copy.

The woman wearing the suit was an original, too: she was older, decades older than Natasha, but her skin was still smooth, her cheeks and lips naturally full, and time could do nothing to erode the arch of those eyebrows or ruin the smooth angle of her jaw. Up close her hair sparkled with strands of grey, and a few distinct streaks, not salt-and-pepper. She wore only heavy black eyeliner and scarlet lipstick, and her heavy perfume, sweet and musky at the same time, came before her like a physical announcement of her presence. Natasha knew the routines of disruption like her own name, better than all the names she'd collected and easily shed through all the years. She knew she was among the very best of the best, there was no doubt. But watching this woman move towards her and defuse the entire scene as naturally as she was breathing, she felt like begging to be taken on as the lowest girl so she could begin all over again. If she knew anything at all, the woman in front of her was a true legend: unknown, unheard of, appearing and vanishing easily as smoke. An old word rose to the top of her mind: _spymistress._

"I've been looking everywhere for you." The woman slid in between them and leaned in to kiss Natasha's left cheek -- Natasha automatically turned to present her right -- and placed just her fingers where Natasha's left shoulder met her arm, supposedly for balance, but Natasha felt a quick hard squeeze: a warning. She reached up and put her own hand where the woman's right shoulder curved into her neck, and squeezed back, _message received._ Decoding it was another matter altogether, but the woman pivoted so she was between Natasha and the man and said, very lightly, _"Helas, m'sieur,_ tonight three is a crowd." She turned her back on him and said to Natasha, "I'm five minutes late, and you're already beating them off with a stick." Behind her, Natasha saw the man's face turn red. She kept her eyes on the woman's face, feeling the bartender still motionless behind her, ready for trouble. The woman winked, and Nat was shocked into a faint smile.

"Look," the man was saying loudly, "I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing barging in here, but we had an _arrangement -- "_

Now Natasha looked at him. "Not anymore," she said, her tone flip, even glib, but it was still her real voice and she saw him register it. Now the woman moved aside and sat down on a stool next to Natasha, so they were both looking up at him; but she made it seem like a queen receiving an annoying supplicant.

"She's spilled the world's secrets and you leave a trail on her hand like a slug. Get out." She spoke with disappointment, not anger, as if the man had failed a test, and jerked her head towards the door.

Natasha put her hand on her purse; the woman didn't even do that. They both stared at him. He flushed an even deeper shade of red, muttered "I don't have to put up with this shit, goddamn, stuck up -- _suka blyad, blyad -- "_ and stormed out. "Smarter than he looked," Natasha mused out loud. She turned to the woman, who smiled at her: a real, bright smile, like sunlight.

"Sorry about 'barging in'. But you looked like you needed saving."

Natasha bristled, in direct proportion to her admiration before -- stupid defensiveness, she knew, but she said, "Good job, you saved me. What do you want?"

"Stoli, on the rocks. But not here." She paused, searching Natasha's face, and whatever she read there made her smile again as she said: _"Je m'appelle Delphine."_

"You know who I am," Natasha said, still defensive, but beginning to enjoy the interaction, just a little bit. She let a smirk curve the edge of her mouth.

Delphine looked as if she were trying not to laugh. "Oh yes, you're famous now. But still hard to catch up with. I really have been looking everywhere for you." Her English was faintly accented, like one drop of absinthe on the sugar cube. 

"You and a whole lot of other people," Nat said, still ungracious, but liking the woman -- _Delphine_ \-- underneath, and Delphine knew it, and grinned.

"Yes, but I got here first." The grin turned into a laugh, very brief, but still bright. "What on earth did you want _him_ for?"

Natasha hesitated; being charmed by a charming stranger was nowhere near even the beginning of trust. She tapped her fingers on the bar, trying to decide, an obvious tell she just let happen for once. Delphine waited, eyes trained on Natasha's face, not impatient. She looked like she could wait for hours, wearing the same faintly amused, expectant look the entire time, without a hint of falsity. Patient as a monument.

"Information," she said finally.

Delphine nodded, as if what she'd said had actually meant anything. "When people like us look for something...." She hesitated too. "....I think really, we're looking for the same kind of thing. Don't you agree?"

"Deep down, everyone's always looking for the same kind of thing," Natasha replied, more than a little disappointed. She was good at talking around the point, but it was another one of the things she wanted to leave behind, at least for a little while. "Safety. Security. Love. Home." She tossed off the words like they were meaningless, but her throat went tight.

Delphine nodded again, like she'd made up her mind. She slid her hand into her pocket -- Natasha tensed, and she grinned again, this time sharp as well as bright -- and said, "Someone told me....this life, this...._profession...." _(The bartender leered behind her back. Natasha ignored him.) "It can only end one way. Don't you agree?" she repeated.

"Of course."

Delphine laid a badly creased snapshot on the bar between them, not sliding it over, just laying it down like the winning card. All four corners were dog-eared, and one was very slightly torn, but the photograph had obviously been carefully smoothed, perhaps laid flat between heavy books: preserved. Saved. Natasha felt her breath catch. The photograph's subject was a slightly haggard but still striking older woman -- her facial structure wasn't quite as durable as Delphine's, and there were bumps and irregularities that betrayed healed scars, bad wounds, reset bones. Her mouth and eyes were framed by faint lines, very slightly slack flesh. All that was eclipsed by her blazing sapphire eyes, shining brightly even in the faded photo, and the cool, imperious tilt of her head, the way she stared down the lens, whoever was behind the camera, even this temporary fixation of her own identity. _Amber._ Natasha was one of the people who had been set on her trail, again and again, looked for her in odd moments and off the clock, always helplessly reaching out for the glittering mirage which vanished as soon as you stretched out your hand. Lorraine Broughton was the true legend. She was one of the few who'd really done it, disappeared for good, quit the game entirely. She made the rest of them look like raw recruits. Natasha reached out, wanting to pick up the photo and examine it under a microscope, memorize every detail, bring it to SHIELD'S top lab like her best trophy and make it give up its secrets one by one. But there was no more lab, no more SHIELD, no one to bring the trophy to; that was why Delphine was letting her see it. Her forefinger hovered over the photograph, and she drew it back.

She looked up. Delphine was studying her face as seriously as Natasha had wanted to scrutinize the photograph, with not a little sympathy in her eyes. Natasha held her gaze, not certain what was showing in her own face, feeling desire, longing, a strange jealousy, even shame, a hundred conflicting things. "The game....never ends," Delphine said, and gave a little one-shouldered quick shrug, not looking away. "Someone always wants to play. But there's also what Graham Greene calls the human factor." She saw Natasha's hidden surprise and her own smile turned crooked. "I wanted to be a poet." Her eyebrows arched briefly on the last word, a quick underlining.

"I wanted to be what they wanted me to be," Natasha said, finally looking back down. "What they made me." The photograph was gone. Delphine reached out and gave her hand another quick hard squeeze, a sharper warning this time: _not here, not now._ Natasha nodded. Her decision had been made perhaps even before Delphine had walked into the bar: when she had unlocked SHIELD's secrets and set them free, when she had accepted Clint's offer, when she had first felt her own judgements forming behind her eyes, filling up the blankness no matter how many times they were erased. Knowing when to cash out was always the most important part of the game.

Delphine held her hand out to the bartender, palm up, and flicked her fingers like a magician. A twisted US bill appeared between them, folded so only the bartender could see the denomination. Natasha read it anyway in his widening eyes. He slung the towel over his shoulder and moved closer, not reaching out for it, waiting to hear the terms.

"We didn't come in here," Delphine said very solemnly, with a sidelong flickering glance at Nat. Natasha suppressed a snicker.

"You were never here," the bartender echoed, palm up, and Delphine dropped the money into his hand. She said "Come on" to Natasha, uncrossed her legs, slid off the barstool and was halfway across the floor all in the same long sleek movement, like a diver entering the water and streaking along below the surface. Natasha and the bartender both stared after her.

"What the hell," Natasha said, and stood up, too, leaving her fake purse with the fake life inside it on the bar, since absolutely nothing in it was hers anyway; she knew it would be analyzed over and over, subjected to chemical tests, literally pulled apart as the one piece of evidence left at the last public sighting of the Black Widow by soldier-scientists desperately trying to turn trash into treasure. And she smiled, and followed.

**Author's Note:**

> It's just basically my headcanon that Delphine's death was faked at the end of _Atomic Blonde_ and she and Lorraine happily retired to some gorgeous vineyard at the foot of Mount Ventoux. (Or....was that the cover for their working together as a freelance team, maybe targeting other women agents in particular? Who can say.) (And yes, I'm fudging Delphine's actual age slightly.)
> 
>   
To add a personal note: I'm still so crap at responding to comments at all, and I'm so sorry. On top of my usual health issues, I've been sick with two-three major problems all summer. But I do read all the comments and love them, I promise. /o\


End file.
